5 NFL Betting Strategies — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] What is up guys, in this video I'm going to be giving you the 5 sharpest strategies to make money betting on football, and we're going to focus on the NFL. So you can see last year in 2024 I used a verified debt tracker called Pickett.

[00:17] I made over $80,000 betting on football, so that includes NFL and college football, it was about half and half. But regardless, the point of this video is to break down how I'm going to attack the sportsbooks this year when betting on the NFL.

[00:32] So there's a few things I want to mention at the start of the video. First things first, I don't bet with my gut, right? Like, every strategy we're going to discuss is data-driven. These are short strategies that pro sports better.

[00:47] This is how they're consistently beating the books. A couple other things I wanted to mention are when I'm betting on the NFL, that doesn't mean I'm only placing bets on Sunday, right? I mean, a lot of times, Monday, I'm already placing bets for Sunday, right?

[01:03] Like, I'm constantly scanning the sportsbooks, looking for inefficiencies in the market value throughout the week, and you can kind of see that in my profit graph from last year.

[01:15] I've placed well over a thousand bets on football, and that's really important, right? Like, as a sharp sports bettor, you're trying to lock in as many bets with an edge as possible.

[01:27] It's not about just finding the lock of the week. That's BS. You should not be paying for picks. That's all total BS, right? Like, sports betting is about placing a bunch of bets.

[01:39] Every bet has a mathematical advantage, whether you're placing arbitrage bets, EB bets. Every single play you lock in has an edge. And then you just kind of let the math work itself out.

[01:51] You can see in September, which was one of my best month's sports betting ever, I made over $70,000. I still had losing days where I lost 7K. And I know at this point I've been very seriously sports betting for over six years.

[02:07] I know that I'm going to have some down days, some down weeks. It's all about having a long-term focus, right? every bet has an edge, you just gotta let the math work itself out. It's kind of like flipping a coin that's weighted to show up on heads, 55% to show up on heads. There are gonna be times where that

[02:24] coin shows up tails three times in a row, but you know over the course of the long run, that coin is gonna land on heads a lot more. It's favor and it's weighted to land on heads. So if you're flipping a

[02:36] coin for money, you'd obviously want to bet on heads. But regardless, without further ado, let's get into the most profitable NFL betting strategies. If you enjoy this content, please like the video,

[02:48] subscribe to the channel, comment any other video ideas. I love making sports betting content, and I definitely will be cranking out tons of content throughout this football season. So videos, things you want to see from me, let me know. So let's start out with DSS books. There's

[03:05] five main DSS books I use. They're super popular. Prize picks, Underdog Fantasy, Better Dabble, and DraftKings Pick 6 is actually a new one that we'll get to use this upcoming season

[03:18] so I've yet to place a play on DraftKings Pick 6 for the NFL yet. But anyways, the way these very popular DFS platforms like PrizePicks work is they have fixed payouts, okay?

[03:30] So I'll give you a simple example. Here you can see a flip I built for the Super Bowl. It ended up cashing in a super profitable play that I ended up locking in in my select was Kareem Hunt under 9.5 first quarter rushing yards. So it may seem like a

[03:48] kind of random player prop, but sometimes the value is in these more niche markets. So basically on Fry's Picks, and you can see that in this little video here, if you switch a player,

[04:00] it doesn't matter what sport you're betting on, by the way, if you switch a player from taking the over to the under, it doesn't matter. You're going to get the same payout regardless for a two-pick entry, a 3x payout. For a three-pick entry, a 6x payout. For a four-pick entry, a 10x payout.

[04:17] So why did I decide to take the under? Well, if you look, if you compare prize picks to sportsbooks, and you can do this with the odds jam positive EV tool, all it does is scan all the lines on

[04:29] prize picks, compare that to sportsbooks in real time to point out value, is you're going to see every sportsbook had Hunt's under massively favored. So, for example, on Caesars, his under was a minus 175 favorite, a really big favorite.

[04:46] You've got to remember, minus 200 means a 2-1 favorite, two-thirds to win. So his under is massively favored. So if you're going to include this in a prize-tick slot, Kareem Hunt's over or under, obviously, you'd want to take his under 9.5 rushing yards.

[05:01] So you can see on Sandwell, for this Kareem Hunt play, they were only offering a one-way market. They only were offering his over at plus 140. Same odds as Caesars. So even though it's only a one-way market, you know if they were offering a price on the under,

[05:16] it would probably be around minus 175. So basically, all you want to do is compare prize pitch lines to sportsbooks and find spots where there's heavy jigs, right? where books are saying, hey, the over or the under,

[05:30] in this case it was the under on Kareem Hunt, is heavily, heavily favored. And that's the sharp, profitable pick you want to be on. Now the next thing I want to mention, if you look at this same slip, is correlation.

[05:43] So correlation, it may sound like a big word, but I promise you it's pretty simple, and I'm going to break it down, and it's by far the best sport to find correlated slips is football.

[05:55] College football as well as the NFL. The NFL sportsbooks just have more line set. So there's a lot more opportunity in NFL correlation. And I going to show you exactly how you can take advantage of these EFS apps like PrizeCuts which are super lucrative with same correlation So same correlation just means pairing picks together in the same game

[06:17] It's always picks in the same game that make sense to pair together. So I'll give you a simple example. In this PrizePix select, I paired Jalen Hurts over in passing yards first half with A.J.

[06:29] Brown over in first half receiving yards. A.J. Brown is Jalen Hurts' main target, so it should intuitively make sense if Jalen Hurts goes over, if he has a great first half.

[06:41] Probably a lot of those passing yards were going to A.J. Brown, and A.J. Brown's more likely to go over. So these two picks are positively correlated. On prize picks, I'm going to get the same payout if I take Hurts over, Brown over, compared to Hurts over, Brown under.

[06:58] Obviously it doesn't make any sense whatsoever To pair together in the same flip for the same payout Jalen Hurts over Brown under So that is important to mention A same game correlation is the strongest

[07:11] When you focus on a quarterback and their main wide receiver So if you think about the Vikings I got their hat on right now Although I'm a Commanders fan But regardless I went to a preseason game for the Vikings

[07:24] You don't want to take Darnold over in some random wide receiver on the Vikings who gets two targets. The strongest correlation is going to be Darnold over Jefferson over, you know,

[07:37] the wide receiver or tight end that has the highest receiving line. That's what makes the most sense to pair together. One thing to mention is in this specific slip, I also believe Hunt's under was positively correlated as well, right?

[07:52] If the Eagles have the ball and are driving more, then there's a higher probability Hunt's going to go under his first quarter rushing yards line. That should intuitively make sense as well.

[08:04] But again, the correlation is strongest. And if you want to exploit same-game correlation on prize picks, it's pretty simple. Wide receiver over the main wide receiver or tight end, the main target, and quarterback over.

[08:17] Now, one thing I wanted to mention that you do need to be careful of on prize picks is payout shifts. So I'll give you a simple example. As I said before, on prize picks, any four-pick entry has a 10x payout, and that is completely true. So four-pick power plays, 10x payout, are in general the best slips for core-weighted football.

[08:39] So if you look at this flip right here, four-pick entry, it's a three-season play, but regardless, I have two correlated picks. Malik Heath over in receiving yards, and Malik Willis over in passing yards.

[08:52] Right, these players are on the same team. Malik helped, or Heath had the highest receiving yards line. So if Malik Willis goes over, Malik Heath is going to be more likely to go over. And you'll see on prospects, they're giving you a 10x payout.

[09:04] That's what they always give you. However, if you change to a 5-pick power play or a 5-pick flex play, which has a 20x payout, you're going to see prize picks throws out their fixed payouts.

[09:18] So if you look at prize picks for a 5-man, if you take Malik Heath over, Malik Willis over, they're going to reduce your payout. You can see me switching it around in the video. They're going to reduce the payout from 20x to 18.5x. So this is called a payout shift.

[09:36] So obviously you want to avoid payout shifts, because that is PrizePix factoring in same-game correlation to try to bring the payout that they're giving you back down to a level that's not profitable.

[09:49] So again, carrying wide receiver over QB over, you're going to have the best success playing four-pick power plays. You should still get a 10x payout, just like in the example I gave you.

[10:01] So on PrizePix specifically, I know there's other DFS apps that I use, but regardless, for PrizePix specifically, the sweet spot is 4Mans. So next, we have Sportsbook Promos.

[10:14] And I call this the low-hanging fruit of sports betting. It's the easiest money you'll ever make. Even if you don't have a big bankroll, you can still make a lot of money with Sportsbook Promos. So basically, all these sportsbooks, sandals, draftkings, PrizePix, splits, whatever,

[10:30] They're all in competition for new customers. PrizePix knows 97% of sports bettors lose long term, so every single day, they want sports bettors waking up and going on to PrizePix,

[10:43] not Underdog Fantasy or FanDuel. So, long story short, and you're going to need multiple sportsbooks to maximize the profit margin and how much money you can make on promos,

[10:55] but every single day, there's probably $50 of free value value being given out in sportsbook promos. So I'll give you a simple example. FLEX is a sportsbook. It's available in nearly every state and they run promos like this all the time. Okay, so this is a

[11:11] free $10 bill. You know, you can't bet a million dollars on this. It's capped at $10, but if you literally log into the app, they're giving you a free $10. And I get it, it's just $10, but it

[11:24] It takes two seconds to do this, and it's free money. Mahomes, over half of the passing yard, plus $100. That's literally a free $10 bill. PrizeTix does this a lot, too. They have free squares.

[11:36] Here you can see one on Caleb Williams. So just taking advantage of the low-hanging fruit, easy money, easy, easy money through these promos that you can make probably $50 a day on average

[11:49] if you're using a bunch of sportsbooks, constantly checking them for profitable promos, profit boosts, risk-free bets, stuff like that. So the third strategy, which is amazing for NFL betting, is arbitrage.

[12:02] Arbitrage is a way to make risk-free profits off the sportsbooks. Sounds crazy, sounds too good to be true, but you'll see tons of people on social media. This guy Arbstein for example is a sharp professional sports bettor He does arbitrage betting for a living He also does free trainings on it So I definitely recommend tuning in to one But basically sports betting legalized in the U

[12:26] in 2018. Everybody wants a piece of the pie. There are literally hundreds of sports books that have launched. Points Bet, Fanatics, Hard Rock, FanDuel, DraftKings, MDM, Caesars. All these books though,

[12:39] they want to be unique and set their own odds. So basically, arbitrage betting is simple. Out of the Millions of odds across books. Sometimes they get so screwed up, so different in where they're pricing games,

[12:52] where you can bet equal and opposite outcomes to guarantee a profit. So I've done full-length YouTube tutorials on arbitrage that you can watch. Pro tip videos, I've explained live arbitrage.

[13:05] Live arbitrage, betting on games while they're occurring, is really profitable, especially if you focus on break times, like timeouts, quarter breaks, halftime, that's the best time to find live ARBs. But let me just take you through a

[13:19] simple example. ARB trial setting is something you can do in any state. Right, so this guy, I literally logged on to Twitter while doing this video, he hit this ARB trial set for $290 risk-free profit. The second the game ends, he's $290

[13:37] richer just from placing a couple bets, which is pretty insane. He's in Florida, one of the worst states for sports betting. There are so many bucks in the U.S. If you're in Texas, it doesn't matter. There's so many bucks, peer-to-peer batting exchanges that

[13:53] anybody can make money with arbitrage. It's an amazing strategy. So basically, what he noticed is two bucks, League One Florida, Novig and ArtRat were super out of sync on

[14:06] the Ravens-Colts preseason game. So, on Novig, he bet the Ravens, and on Hard Rocks, he bet the Colts at minus 140. Colts, minus 140, betting 140,

[14:18] or sorry, minus 140, betting 140, profit 100, and then he got the Ravens, plus 233, betting 100 to profit 233. Obviously, these books are super out of sync. So, there's no complicated math.

[14:31] All you have to do is follow an arbitrage calculator. so if he knows he's betting 1470 on Hard Rock you can just plug that into his arbitrage calculator which tells you to bet like approximately 760 bucks

[14:44] on NoVeg which is a peer-to-peer betting exchange with no limit tells you to bet around 760 bucks on the Ravens at plus 233 so if the game ties which I think is possible in preseason you can get ties

[14:59] if the game ties both bets are refunded That's the only possibility, right? If the game ties, your net profit is zero. Obviously, this wouldn't apply to playoff games or certain player props.

[15:13] But if the game ties, both bets are going to be refunded. However, let's go through the much more likely outcome. It is one of these two teams is going to win. So, let's just say the Colts win, right?

[15:25] If the Colts win, he's going to win his bet on Hard Rock. He bet $1470 at minus $140, so his profit is going to be, you know, about $1050 if you just work out the math.

[15:37] On Novig, he's going to lose his bet on the Ravens, which was $756.76, so he's going to make, if you go through that little math equation, about $290. Now, that's the first option.

[15:51] Will those tie? If the game ties, get refunded, net profit is zero. So basically, if the Colts win, the favorite team wins on Hard Rock, loses on Novig for a net profit of about $290.

[16:03] If the Ravens win, again, one of these three things has to happen. There's no downside. There's no way he loses money. But if the Ravens win, he's going to lose $1,470 on Hard Rock.

[16:15] He's going to win $1,766 approximately. You can see the math below on the screen. He's going to win on Novig, which means his profit's about $296.

[16:27] There may be slight differences due to, like, rounding on Novig. I'm not exactly sure, but regardless, you get the point. He's making $290 to $300, basically, regardless of what happens.

[16:40] All he's rooting for is no tie, and then he makes $290, basically just day trading the sportsbooks. You're just day trading line discrepancies to guarantee profits. Now, as an arbitrage bettor, you want to be constantly hunting for these plays.

[16:56] So, for example, this preseason game, I don't think it's until Saturday or Sunday, he found this on a Tuesday. It's a Tuesday when I'm recording this video and when he tweeted this. So, as an arbitrage bettor, the more work you put in,

[17:10] you know, you never know when sportsbooks are going to get out of sync and these opportunities are going to exist. So, the more you hunt for arbitrage bets, the more you're going to find, the more money you're going to be able to make.

[17:22] And again, what's amazing about arbitrage, the reason I started sports betting with it when I had a $5,000 bankroll, is it's risk-free money, right? Maybe it doesn't have as much upside as EV betting or some other betting strategies,

[17:35] but you know every single day that you put in the work to find these arbitrage bets, you're going to make money. What's better than that? It's a way to grow your bankroll in a risk-free way. Kind of like investing in bonds.

[17:47] but again in sports betting in general not always the case for NFL but you're usually placing arbitrage bets on games that day so the only thing that sucks about this arbitrage bet is he has to

[18:00] wait until Saturday or Sunday when the game ends to get his $290 in profit so he's locking up you know about $2,000 still I mean that's a ridiculous return for like five or six days he's getting over

[18:14] a 10% return, $290 out of about $2,000 total debt. Ridiculous return for just six days. I mean, you have to remember treasuries bonds U treasuries return 4 over a year This guy just made well over 10 that he getting in five days That an incredible return Every investment advisor dream

[18:38] So finding these arbitrage bets is an amazing way to grow your bankroll in a risk-free way, and you should absolutely be doing it. But let's get on to the next strategy, which is somewhat related and is called middle betting.

[18:50] So next we have middle betting, which is kind of similar to arbitrage betting, just like all sportsbooks set their own odds, sometimes get out of sync, it's the same thing with their lines, okay? Sportsbooks set their own unique lines, and sometimes they get way out of sync.

[19:06] So I found this play on the Odds Jam Fantasy Optimizer. You'll see on Underdog Fantasy, a DFS book, this works for sportsbooks, DFS apps, Dandle DraftKings sometimes have amazing middles, and live betting,

[19:19] you can oftentimes find some super huge juicy middles on point spreads, but especially this is for player props, passing, receiving, rushing yards. Underdog had Melrose line at 81 half.

[19:33] If you look at prize picks, it was 113 half. That's a massive discrepancy. So what you could do is play the over 81 half, under 113 half. You're always going to win at least one of these plays on underdog and prize picks.

[19:47] but if he has between 82 and 113 passing yards, you're going to win both plays. You're going to win your over and your under. So I call middle the low-risk lottery tickets.

[20:00] You're always going to win one play, but you have the possibility to cash both. And you have to remember, most players, they follow a normal distribution. We know Melro, he's not going to throw for zero yards.

[20:13] He's not going to throw for 1,000. so he's probably going to end up somewhere in that range. So the probability of this middle hits is actually quite likely. And you may be thinking, too, like, where did the sports knowledge come in?

[20:28] It doesn't, okay? There's a few main strategies the sharps and pros use to make money. Stop overcomplicating sports betting. It's correlation, sharp DFS strategy, that's the first thing we discussed.

[20:40] Promo, second thing we discussed. Middles and arbitrage, next two things we discussed. And then the final strategy we are going to talk about is positive EV betting. So let's get to that. So the final strategy I absolutely love for making money betting on the NFL is called positive EV betting.

[21:00] It makes up the majority of my betting volume nowadays. And again, it is not risk-free. This is very different from middle and arbitrage betting. even in months I mean even this month in August when I'm recording this video I'm up over thirty

[21:15] thousand dollars I still have days where I'm down three thousand bucks so easy betting you are going to have variance but basically all that easy betting is is it's using market data to find

[21:29] discrepancies so there's hundreds of sports books in what you're doing so as an example I locked in commanders. Minus 198 on FanDuel. Obviously, that's my team. I'm from Virginia. I love

[21:42] Jaden Daniels. But I'm betting this at minus 198. All the other books have the commanders as much bigger favorites around like minus 230. So all of these other books are data

[21:54] points. DraftKings, Caesars are multi-billion dollar companies. So the way I like to think about EV betting is kind of like I'm buying the commanders at 198 bucks when every other data

[22:08] point is saying they should be around 230 bucks, minus 230 favorites, bigger favorites. So EV betting, you're finding value in the market using other sportsbooks as data points. I mean, you can

[22:22] think about another simple example is, let's say a player's passing yards line is 180 yards on FanDuel. In every other sports book, DraftKings, Caesars, PrizePix, every other book,

[22:36] Pinnacle, Circa, BetOnline, those are known to be short books. Every other book has them, let's say, 40 yards higher at 220. Obviously, I'm going to bet the over 180 on FanDuel because every other

[22:48] book is saying no, the line shouldn't be at 180, it should be at 240. So EV betting can apply to odds differences as well as line differences. Now another interesting thing about this commander's

[23:02] play is you can see DraftKings and FanDuel are arbitrage. This is a very small arbitrage bet, but DraftKings and FanDuel are such different prices that you could arbitrage bet it to make

[23:14] a little risk-free profit, but whenever there's arbitrage, one of the bets has to be profitable, right? If I can bet the Cowboys plus 200 on DraftKings and the Commanders minus 198 on Sandwell

[23:27] to make a little risk-free profit, if you can bet both bets equal and opposite outcomes on two books to make a guaranteed profit, one of those two bets has to be profitable or plus EV. So, you have

[23:39] higher confidence in your edge. Whenever there's an arbitrage opportunity, you could just take the risk-free profit like we went through earlier, but whenever arbitrage exists, there has to be a

[23:51] positive EV bet, right? There has to be a mathematically profitable plus EV wager because you could bet both and make a small little profit or a big profit. It depends on the arbitrage opportunity, but with arbitrage, one of the two plays has to be profitable or plus EV. Cowboys

[24:08] plus 200 or commanders minus 198 which increases your confidence in your edge right so i love finding cross market ev bets i've made a full youtube tutorial on it because whenever there's

[24:21] a cross market you have 100% confidence that one of the bets one of the two plays is plus easy then you can kind of look at the other sportsbooks and figure out which play is actually profitable but anyways tons of information thanks for watching this video like comment subscribe

[24:36] Let me know other video ideas. Let's make money this NFL season.